The paradox of grammatical change : perspectives from romance / edited by Ulrich Detges, Richard Waltereit.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Detges, Ulrich.

Waltereit, Richard.

Series:

Amsterdam studies in the theory and history of linguistic science. Series IV, Current issues in linguistic theory, 0304-0763 ; v. 293

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Linguistic change.

Grammar, Comparative and general.

Romance languages--Grammar, Historical.

Romance languages.

Physical Description:

252 p.

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Philadelphia PA : J. Benjamins Pub. Co., c2008.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

This article investigates whether evolutionary accounts can offer new insights into the paradox of language change. Specifically, I will examine three recent influential accounts (Haspelmath 1999, Keller 1994, and Croft 2000). As they contain a broad spectrum of positions on the relations between language and biology, they can be divided into metaphorical, biologistic and generalized views. Cross-cutting these, two types of evolutionary accounts are distinguished, which I call adaptive and two-level views, respectively. I critically evaluate their potential to provide satisfactory explanations for various types of change, drawing on examples from Romance and Germanic. Finally, I propose a revised explanation scheme which brings together the two-level approaches with theoretical distinctions and explanatory factors that have been suggested in earlier non-evolutionary frameworks, so that a more comprehensive view of language change can be obtained.

Contents:

The Paradox of Grammatical Change

Editorial page

Title page

LCC data

CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

INTRODUCTION

REFERENCES

SYNTACTIC CHANGE FROM WITHIN AND FROM WITHOUT SYNTAX

1. The problem: The locus of syntactic change

2. The rise of French est-ce que as an interrogative particle: a pragmatically motivated syntactic change

3. Shift of grammatical function in Spanish presentational constructions: a syntactic change caused by syntactic factors

4. Conclusion

Secondary Literature

Old French Texts

ON EXPLAINING THE RISE OF C'EST-CLEFTS IN FRENCH

1. Introduction

2. The grammar of c'est-clefts in French

3. On the alleged trade-off between clefting and focus in situ

3.1 Clefts in speech and in writing

3.2 Implications for diachrony

4. Syntactic motivations for the rise of c'est-clefts in French

4.1 Discourse-governed constituent order from Latin to Modern French

4.2 Corpus evidence

5. On explaining clefting 'beyond necessity'

Corpora

Further References

THE ROLE OF THE PLURAL SYSTEM IN ROMANCE

1. Introduction: Different systems of indefinite nominal determiners in Romance nominals as results of language change

2. A functional 'explanation': Romance indefinite determiners as 'classification devices'

3. A formal account of Romance indefinite nominals

3.1 'Manufacturing plurality'

3.2 Romance languages: gender, number and 'classification'

4. From Latin to Romance: what happened in the structure?

5. Conclusion

MORPHOLOGICAL DEVELOPMENTS AFFECTING SYNTACTIC CHANGE

2. The development of the Latin ACI

3. The evolution of French infinitives

4. Explaining grammatical change

Latin texts

French texts

Spanish text

Italian texts

Secondary literature.

GRAMMATICALISATION WITHIN THE IP-DOMAIN

2. The Data

2.1 Stylistic Fronting

2.2 Clitic Distribution

3. Connecting and explaining the phenomena

4. Explaining Syntactic Change

4.1 Language change within the generative tradition

4.2 Grammaticalisation within minimalism

5. Loss of stylistic fronting and postverbal clitics in Romance

IMPERFECT SYSTEMS AND DIACHRONIC CHANGE

1. The si construction in Modern Italian

1.1 Passive si

1.2 Impersonal si

2. Old Italian

2.1 Passive si

2.2 *Impersonal si

3. Intermediate stages

3.1 Stage I

3.2 Stage II

3.3 Stage III

4. Conclusions

FROM TEMPORAL TO MODAL

1. A puzzle

2. The historical situation in Old Spanish

3. The pluperfect as the starting point for the development of irrealis readings

4. The developments in Portuguese

5. The turning-point in Spanish: from condition-based irreality to generalised counterfactuality

6. The third stage: from counterfactual (irrealis) to subjunctive II

7. Interpretation and conclusions

Primary texts

Latin

Spanish

Portuguese

NON-LEXICAL CORE-ARGUMENTS IN BASQUE, GERMAN AND ROMANCE

2. The Realisation of non-lexical arguments in Basque

2.1 Basque, one argument (intransitive, Nor)

2.2. Basque, two arguments S-DO (transitive, Nor-Nork)

2.3. Basque, three arguments S-IO-DO (transitive, Nor-Nori-Nork)

3. The typological parameter head-marking vs. dependent marking

4. The other end of the hierarchy: German

5. The Romance languages - problematic intermediate cases

6. Language change: intermediary stages of a change from dependent-marking towards head-marking

7. Conclusion

8. Closing remarks: no "object-conjugation" in Romance (or elsewhere)!

REFERENCES.

TOWARDS A COMPREHENSIVE VIEW OF LANGUAGE CHANGE

2. Language and biology: Three positions

3. Main orientations and key elements of evolutionary accounts

3.1. Adaptive views: Adaptation and optimization

3.2. Critique

3.3. Interim Summary I

3.4. Two-level views: Innovation and propagation

3.5. Critique

3.6. Interim Summary II

4. Two-level views and traditional approaches to language change

5. A revised explanation scheme of language change

6. Conclusions

SUBJECT INDEX

The series CURRENT ISSUES IN LINGUISTIC THEORY.

Notes:

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9786612152290

9781282152298

1282152297

9789027291639

9027291632

OCLC:

233637335